


Under The Veil

by uumuu



Series: Remodeling [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gender or Sex Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 12:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10944900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: Thuringwethil gets her bat-fell back, but she wants more.





	Under The Veil

**Author's Note:**

> Direct sequel to [Remodeling](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5101016).

“Here,” was all that Maedhros said as she handed Thuringwethil her bat-fell, the heavy garment-weapon draped over her maimed arm. 

Thuringwethil hesitated to take it, and not because it was besmirched after the princess of Doriath had handled it in ways Thuringwethil herself never would have. Her body stood perfectly still, but her eyes quickly crept up to Maedhros's face. 

Thuringwethil had spent a little over a month with her. Maedhros kept her locked up in a tiny, brightly lit room until the information she provided on the doings of Men from the East had proven true. After that, she had been allowed to eschew light if she wished, and to regularly drink her blood. Finding out the location of her bat-fell had been all too easy once she could draw strength from the life-essence of so powerful an elf. The furthest reaches of the Anfauglith, skirting Angband's very borders, rolled out before them grim and baleful the day they rode out to search for the pair. Thuringwethil had shuddered at the sight, struck by the oppressive atmosphere of the place as she never had before. Yet she guided them – Maedhros, her singer brother, her steel-haired sister, a handful nimble riders – guided them until they fell like a pack of wolves on the princess and her mortal lover. 

“You are free to go,” Maedhros said, her gruff voice, low for a woman, cleaving through the layers of Thuringwethil's memories. “It took a while, but our beloved princess capitulated, thanks to you.”

Thuringwethil licked her lips. The mortal man's blood still coursed in her veins, filled her with vigour. She had almost sucked him dry, feeling him shrink in her hold, imbibing strength for days, but she felt oddly unsatisfied. 

She had always liked drinking in the fear of her prey together with their blood – their pain, their despair – all of it feeding her spirit. She gleefully partook of their helplessness, savoured their last feeble whimpers and wheezes too, whenever she sucked every last drop of blood out of their bodies. But when she fed from Maedhros the thrill of it was new, and staggering in its novelty, headier than any fear. She kept wondering if Maedhros willed it so, if she had not merely _let_ her feed.

Thuringwethil took her bat-fell. A keen spark danced in Maedhros's eyes. No doubt she was curious how Thuringwethil would look wearing it, if it turned her into a monster, something different from the mostly-elven looking creature she appeared to be. 

“Aren't you afraid I'll return to my –...” she didn't want to say 'master', but she realised a part of her was scared of saying 'former', scared of where it put her.

“I very much doubt he would have you back now, he must have noticed the Men from the East were not exactly welcome here, and if he's not entirely stupid he will have understood which missing servant of his revealed a little more than they should have,” Maedhros quipped, her chapped lips shaping a deceptively disarming smile. “And besides, it's not like you can tell him anything all that significant to make up for it. You don't know what my plans are, do you?”

“I could try to wrest it from you. I could...kill you.”

Still smiling, Maedhros reached into one of her pockets – so fast that Thuringwethil almost did not see it – and it emerged coated in light, the fiendish light that could quickly bring Thuringwethil to her knees. 

Thuringwethil did take a step back, but held Maedhros's gaze even through the blinding, vicious radiance of the Silmaril. She wouldn't beg to be kept by anyone. She could surely find a new purpose, a faraway place where she could settle, perhaps a companion, even. The earth was wider than Morgoth had made it seem. 

Maedhros put the gem back in the pocket of her leather vest, and crossed her arms over her chest in her peculiar manner, with her left acting as a prop for her stump. 

“How did you convince her to give the Silmaril up?” Thuringwethil asked. She didn't really care, but it was buying time, to delay the inevitable. 

Maedhros snickered, probably seeing through her. “Apart from you nearly killing the man she loves? I told her she can tell her father that if he still wants the gem he can ask me.”

“Was it worth all the trouble? Capturing them, taking them here, then letting them go?”

She had expected Maedhros to kill both, there on the wastes of the Anfauglith, and just take the jewel. It would have been easy to mask it as the work of Morgoth – orcs could have done it, wargs, or just desperate wild animals. Maedhros's steel-haired sister would have done it. Thuringwethil had perceived Celegorm's lust for the princess' blood, a broiling hunger very similar to her own. She hadn't believed elves were capable of such a pure, honest, all-encompassing emotion. It had made her feel, for a fleeting instant, as if her own life could truly start anew among them. If only Maedhros had been more alike to her sister.

Maedhros shrugged her wide, angular shoulders. “I had no reason to kill them.”

She stood aside, and bowed to Thuringwethil. A parting gesture, a dismissal.

Thuringwethil draped the bat-fell on her shoulders, and walked past Maedhros, her chin held high. 

Maedhros followed her to the gates of the keep, but stopped on the threshold while Thuringwethil crossed it. Thuringwethil felt many eyes on her, eyes which expected her to transform and fly at any moment, wary eyes, ready to counter any threat. Maedhros's gaze stayed with her the longest, likely to make sure she would truly leave.

Thuringwethil faced the setting sun.

The country at the foot of the craggy mountains of Himring was bedecked in autumn. Rust streamed down the higher slopes like dried blood, the rounded hills below seemed to be on fire. Further south ashes and soot still shrouded the land. Thuringwethil didn't care to soar above the once lush plains of Himlad and be able to take in all of the debris, so she walked through utter desolation, hardly taking in her surroundings. 

Her gaze darted towards Doriath. She had half a mind to go after the princess and the mortal man, take her revenge in full. They could not have gone far. He couldn't even stand up, and for all her reluctance not to spill any more blood than was strictly necessary, Maedhros had not been a kinder host to the princess than she had been to Thuringwethil herself during her imprisonment. Perhaps they were hiding somewhere nearby. She could find them, snuff out the man's useless life and have her fun with the half-maia princess before finishing her. Then she would take her skin to wear as a trophy, and leave the body where her family could find it.

Those idle fantasies kept her distracted, while she mindlessly forged on. She walked all though the night, and through the next day, the sun so pale behind hazy clouds she paid no heed to it.

The following night, a sudden rainfall stirred her from the wanderings of her mind in the middle of dragon-scorched Himlad. Another dawn would soon break, its thin promise of light already dividing the darkness of the night in half. She had to find shelter if she didn't want to lose all her strength. She stood still, empty, among bones picked clean and scattered bits of armour. 

Then she donned her bat-fell and flew, but not southward, or eastward and not westward. 

Maedhros had not yet awoken when she flew into her bedroom, unhindered by stone and glass, but was up and pointing a dagger at her the moment she landed silently on her floor.

Thuringwethil dropped the bat-fell to the ground, and flung herself towards Maedhros, throwing her arms around her neck. The dagger tore her dress and nicked her flesh, drawn aside at the very last moment. “I want to have you –” she breathed out. 

She pressed her lips to Maedhros's neck, resisting the urge to bite for blood, and slid them up to her mouth. She pressed them down on it, in a kiss as passionate as she could make it. 

Maedhros was unmoved, and opened her mouth just to speak. “It's useless,” she said in a clipped tone. “I don't feel anything anymore.” Thuringwethil frowned as he was pushed back. “If you came back for sex, you can leave again.”

Thuringwethil closed her hands into fists, letting her gaze stray from Maedhros's face to her arms and legs, left bare by her coarse nightshirt. 

“I want to have you,” she repeated, too wrapped up in her desire to think of anything else.

Maedhros eyed her searchingly, her gaze sharp beyond a veil of annoyance, or distress. “I can't have you, can I?” She turned on her heel, walked towards her nightstand. She laid the sword down and picked up the Silmaril instead. “Could you live next to so much light?”

Thuringwethil forced herself to stay where she was, even as Maedhros brought the cursed jewel closer and closer to her. “No, I've always lived in shadows. But I can become your shadow. Your people won't mind my presence.”

“Even if I can't give much back to you for your...dedication?”

“I will have you.”

“Until you tire of me.”

“I won't tire of your blood...and of your sisters' too, perchance.”

Maedhros quirked an eyebrow, superficially amused. “Not my brother's?”

“I don't like him,” Thuringwethil candidly avowed. 

There was something uncanny in the way Maglor sang, something uncanny in his heartless storm eyes, and Thuringwethil would not underestimate elves again. Worse still, Maglor was already Maedhros's shadow, devoted and trusted. 

“Well, I do like him.” Maedhros gestured with her stump towards the bat-fell. “Would you stay, even if I asked you, as your queen, to hand that back to me and then gave it to him?”

It was a provocation, but also an opening. Thuringwethil slowly slipped the bat-fell off her shoulders, still warm and alive from the contact with her body, and draped it over Maedhros's arm. Her dismissal she would not accept, every other obstacle she could work around. Besides, Maedhros was a strategist. She would not be blind to all that Thuringwethil could do for her that no one else among her subjects could, not even her brother or her sisters.

“I will stay by your side.”

Maedhros threw the bat-fell unceremoniously on the bed, and put the Silmaril back where it had been resting. Thuringwethil didn't hide her sigh of relief, realising how close her knees had been to buckling under her. In the renewed, blessed dimness of the room, she put her hands around Maedhros again, and nestled her head in the crook of her shoulder.

Maedhros let her stay like that for a while, then rang the bell that would bring her brother to her room.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think Thuringwethil was unable to go out into the light (as per classic vampire lore), but I believe (for the purpose of this story at least) that light did weaken her if she spent too long in it, and thus the Silmaril would be basically her bane.


End file.
